In industrial sausage production processes, stuffed sausage chains are normally automatically suspended in the form of loops by means of a hanger. The term sausage chains or sausage loops stands here for a connected accumulation of individual portions and also for continuously stuffed, undivided sausage strands. The sausage loops are held e.g. by reception hooks. Subsequently, the sausages are pushed onto a smoking rail by hand. This smoking rail is then hung in a smoking trolley by the operator. The smoking trolley, in turn, is then moved into a smoking chamber. The diversity of different smoking rails, smoking trolleys and sausage products makes it much more difficult to automate the loading of smoking rails and smoking trolleys. Hence, automated systems have not been used up to now. Alternatively to this course of action, there are also facilities which smoke the products in a continuous cycle and which are used instead of the smoking chambers. In view of the simpler conditions that have to be fulfilled for automating continuous facilities, automated systems for loading and unloading these facilities are here already used.
In the case of particularly simple sausage products in synthetic sausage casings and in the case of certain applications, subprocesses have already been simplified and semi-automated. For example, systems are known which allow smoking rails to be removed, one at a time, from a pile of smoking rails. Systems used for threading the smoking rails into the smoking rail hanger by means of gripping technology are known in connection with continuous facilities.
These systems consist of two gripping modules; the first one takes hold of the smoking rail at one end thereof. In the next operating step, a manipulating system or a robot introduces the smoking rail into the hanger. In the next operating cycle, the robot moves the second gripping module up to the smoking rail and takes hold of the other end of said smoking rail. The robot is thus able to remove the smoking rail together with the products from the hanger. Fast cycle times cannot be achieved by means of this system. In addition, the sausages must be very uniform in shape and must be suspended such that a free space for introducing the smoking rail is formed. In view of the fact that the gripping module must take the smoking rails from a conveyor belt and must thread them through the spaces between the sausage chain, this handling takes much time which the robot lacks for its actual task, viz. conveying the laden smoking rails e.g. to a smoking trolley. In addition, it is difficult to thread the smoking rail through the sausage loops, since, during such threading, the smoking rail is held by only one gripper so that it will hang down.
Another system which is already known is a manual system in the case of which smoking rails are arranged in a horizontal orientation on a vertically disposed turntable, the sausage loops being seized by the smoking rail and removed from the hooks of the hanger by manually rotating the turntable. This system could not gain acceptance on the market, since it did not allow a reduction of the personnel expenditure on the part of the operating company.